A liquid ring vacuum pump or compressor apparatus has sequentially an inlet segment, a compression segment, a discharge segment, and a seal segment. The pump includes a generally annular housing having a longitudinal axis; a rotor shaft journaled for rotation in bearings within fixed bearing housings external to the pump housing; a rotor mounted on the shaft for rotation within the housing and having radially extending vanes forming a plurality of working chambers; and a port-containing cone member through which a pumped medium is admitted to and discharged from the working chambers. Pump heads which include fixed bearing housings have the advantage that the bearing location is fixed radially in relation to the axis of the cone, for control of centered position of the rotor mounted on the shaft in relation to the cone mounted on the head. Pump heads with a fixed bearing design have the disadvantage that it is necessary to disassemble the pump to change the bearing. This bearing change procedure is time consuming and costly, especially if the pump is required for production.
Removable bearing brackets on prior and current pump designs have made it possible to change a bearing without disassembling the pump. This has been desired when considering making a quick change of bearings on a pump that is installed for production.
When major bearing failure causes damage to the bearing housing, a removable bearing bracket can be replaced and save the expense of replacing an entire head.
In the past, liquid ring vacuum pumps have incorporated removable bearing brackets of various designs. The most common design is a four arm design mounted to the side of the head. The plane of interface between this bearing bracket and head is vertical and perpendicular to the axis of the pump. The weakness of the design is the lack of positive reference to the center of the cone mounted in the head and the lack of control of infinite number of radial misalignment positions of the shaft relative to the center of the cone mounted on the inside of the head, in the reassembly of the pump. Another weakness of four arm design is that all the static load is held by bolts parallel to the axis of the pump. The tightness of these bolts holds the alignment position of the bearing bracket to the head.
In U.S. Pat. No. 297,942, the inventor, Somarakis, has the bearing bracket interface to the head on a single horizontal plane. This single reference plane controls the elevation of the bearing, but uses machined circles, with inherent tolerances, in each bearing bracket to independently control both the horizontal position, and axis angle in aligning each end of the shaft to the central axis of the cones mounted in the heads. These same machined circles, with their inherent tolerances, in each bearing bracket control the axial in and out position of the two bearing centers.
All of the vertical static load is supported and transferred from the bracket to the head in a horizontal plane and parallel to the axis of the pump.